Tom Cruise Scientology vid leaks onto net

Thesp offers nine minutes of enlightenment

A nine-minute video showing Tom Cruise chatting about his Scientology beliefs has leaked onto the net, allegedly much to the chagrin of the Church of Scientology.

The four-year-old clip popped up yesterday on YouTube "for a few hours", and was subsequently republished by Radar and Defamer before removal from all three. In it, Cruise says of being a Scientologist: "It's rough and tumble and it's wild and woolly and it's a blast. It's a blast. It really is fun because there is nothing better than going out there and fighting the fight and suddenly you see things are better."

He expands: "Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident it's not like anyone else. As you drive past, you know you have to do something about it because you know you're the only one that can really help."

Cruise, who's backed throughout the vid by the Mission Impossible theme, says of the Church of Scientology: "We are the authorities on getting people off drugs, we are the authorities on the mind, we are the authorities on improving conditions... we can rehabilitate criminals... we can bring peace and unite communities."

According to Gawker, the video had been "passed around privately by reporters and writers investigating Cruise's ties with Scientology". The leak comes hot on the heels of the rumpus over Andrew Morton's unauthorised biography of Cruise which claims, among other things, that the thesp is the second-in-command of the Church of Scientology - an assertion described as "nutty" by Cruise's lawyer Bert Fields.

There is no evidence to back Gawker's claim that the Church of Scientology was behind the removal of the video from some sites, but the organisation has a history of energetic legal sabre-rattling. ®